Page 44 of Too Dangerous To Die

Blood runs across her arms. She’s smiling.

I smell ash. I taste metal.

Pain rips through my skull.

The vision fractures like glass. I crumple to the ground, clutching my face as warm wetness spills from my nose.

Blood.

I wipe it away with shaking fingers, heart hammering like a war drum. My breath comes in gasps, and when I look up?—

Rhaegar is gone.

Panic claws up my throat.

“Rhaegar?” I call out. The city absorbs the sound like a sponge. “Rhaegar!”

Nothing.

Not even an echo.

I curse under my breath and push myself to my feet, magic sparking chaotically in my limbs. Something is wrong. Something is watching me.

And then I hear it.

A snarl.

Low. Wet. Hungry.

I whirl around just in time to see it step out from the shadows—a beast the size of a small house, hunched and snarling, its skin like oil-slick stone. Its eyes burn with sickly yellow light. It isn’t natural. It isn’t alive. It’s bound by magic—by the same threads I just disturbed.

It charges.

I scream, darting between two columns just as its claws rake the air where my throat was seconds ago. Magic roars in my blood. Instinct screams at me to run—but something deeper, darker, anchors me.

I spin, pulse pounding.

“Come on then,” I growl.

It lunges again.

I roll beneath the strike, reach up with both hands, and unleash a burst of chaotic force straight into its gut. The blast hurls it backward, smashing it into a pillar that explodes in dust and fractured stone. It snarls, stunned—but not dead.

I press my palm to the ground. Energy surges beneath my skin.Arcane and earth, blended. Raw. Untrained.I feel the pulse of the city’s heart, and I call it.

A crack splits the floor beneath the beast’s feet. Roots—long petrified—spear upward, wrapping around its limbs and yanking it back as I raise both hands and scream.

Magic pours from me in a wave of silver flame.

It crashes into the creature, and this time, it doesn’t get back up.

The silence afterward is deafening.

I drop to my knees, panting, my body shaking with exhaustion and triumph and fear.

Suddenly , a slow, deliberate clap.

I whip around.

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